My mother and I started to do some work on the rig this weekend. She muchly expanded our to do list. The end result is going to be blog worthy awesomeness at some point, but is only half completed at present.

One project that we did finish were the curtains in the study. Yes, I already had curtains in the study, and lovely ones at that, but only from the inside. They didn’t look finished on the outside and were, according to the US customs official in 2011, a dead giveaway that my rig was a full-time home. So we lined all the curtains with white material to make them look uniform around the rig and moved the rods up higher so that they don’t show from outside, like so:

I wish I’d thought to grab a before pic, but that’s me. 🙂

Next, the hideous, never meant to be permanent, cloth dresser is GONE!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!

However, due to a slight and easily fixable, measuring error, I can only show you this teaser of my new wonderful, everything I hoped for, dresser:

I have gone from six huge drawers to nine smaller drawers and I look forward to organizing my clothes this evening. 🙂

We also started to get the filing cabinet secured, a job that surprisingly has my mother stumped.

And I sort of have a new desk! This is one project that I would never have thought I needed done, but which my mother zeroed in on right away because of my the new client I’ve picked up. I’m not sharing an pics of that till the job is completed because the awesomeness of the end result will be diminished by showing an in progress pic. 🙂

We’re short on time, but after finishing all of these projects, we have some major work to do in the living room, including building a wall, a door, and possibly even a closet.

And at some point, we are going to get that new inverter installed. I did some research and discovered that a 1,000W inverter needs really small gauge wiring, ideally no. 2, so that will require making an even bigger hole in my living room floor. Since I’ll be making one hole, I agree with my mother that I might as well make a bunch more and, well, the end result will be awesome.

I just hope we’re as good at finishing projects as we are at planning them. 😀

(I’m off to Gatineau on business tomorrow, so I may not be able to blog again until the end of the week.)

I’m about to start yet another electrical upgrade to my RV’s 12V system. The main reason for this is that my office setup is using more power than I would have expected (mainly because the work I do keeps evolving) and I will need to start printing a lot while off shore power.

My current setup has:

-two 6V batteries offering me about 120 amp hours
-one 400W inverter
-one 150W solar panel
-one 15W solar panel

When I did the math to get my solar panel, I estimated that I use about 40A per day and that I’d ideally need 60A available to me. Those numbers still hold up; I have average 50A per day if I’m working and need to heat a little.

My unscientific experiment with the solar panel this spring told me that on a sunny day, my batteries are charged by noon regardless of how low they were in the evening. So that tells me that I have some wasted potential capacity and that I don’t need another solar panel right now. What I could use are more amp hours in the form of more batteries.

Because of weight and space considerations, I have decided to go from 2x6V batteries to 2x12V batteries. Assuming that my 12V batteries have a capacity of 180 amp hours and that I have access to 60% of that capacity (108 amp hours), I will have 216 amp hours available to me, for an increase of 96 amp hours.

I am also going to be adding a Xantrex LinkPRO Battery Monitor. There are monitors that are easier to install, but this one is available on Amazon and the entire cost was covered with two months’ worth of affiliate gift certificates. I should be getting it by August. Long time readers will know that I have been talking about a battery monitor for years and it’s finally going to happen! Thank you so much to everyone who buys products on Amazon through my links!

Next, I need a bigger capacity inverter to charge a laptop, run several external hard drives, and print. Oh, heck, and run the crock pot, too! I’ll check for sales and will be getting something in the 600W to 1000W range.

In terms of office equipment, my current Brother laser printer is woefully inadequate for my lifestyle. The power consumption of a laser printer is incompatible with life on an inverter unless you have a massive battery bank, a zillion watts in solar panels, and a generator as a backup. I am eying a multifunction HP inkjet printer with low power requirements and the cheapest operating cost in its class, but I won’t say anything more about the printer selection process until I buy one.

My mother and I are going to start doing some work on the rig this weekend and one of the projects will be to get 120V power on the passenger side of the rig in the front, right above the battery bank. What I am envisioning is a charging station there based on a power strip that I can plug into either my new 120V outlet or my new inverter. I will also be installing the battery monitor in that location. It will be much easier to get it there through the same hole used to run the inverter wiring than to run the monitor cabling to the location of the solar panel monitor.

What I like best about this plan is that it isn’t going to cost me a fortune. The most expensive component will be the batteries since I don’t have to put the monitor in the budget. I haven’t decided yet if I will be getting them here, in Canada, or in the US, but the latter is more likely. So I will probably hit the road with my monitor and new inverter installed, but won’t get to reap the benefits of my upgrades for a bit.